As is so often the case with small fields, the four horses in the race finished in extended line astern, the favorite winning it at a canter by at least ten lengths. There was hardly a cheer from the measly crowd, and the winner returned to an almost deserted unsaddling enclosure.
As Luca had said, it wasn’t much fun.
A man in a suit came striding across from beneath the grandstand just as the rain began to fall in a torrent. He was holding an umbrella, but it didn’t appear to be keeping him very dry. Too much water was bouncing back from the ground. His feet must have been soaked by the time he stopped in front of me.
“What the bloody hell’s going on?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?” I asked him in all innocence.
“With the bloody prices?” he said loudly.
“What about the prices?” I asked him.
“How come that winner was returned at two-to-one when everyone knows it should have been odds-on?”
“Nothing to do with me,” I said, spreading my hands out wide.
“Don’t get bloody clever with us,” the man said with menace, pointing his finger at me.
“And who is us, exactly?” I demanded, trying to disregard the implied threat.
He ignored me and went over to remonstrate with Larry Porter, who told him to go away and procreate, or words to that effect.
The man was far from pleased. “I’m warning you two,” he said, pointing at both Larry and me. “We won’t stand for that.”
Larry shouted at him again to go away, using some pretty colorful language that made even me wince.
“What was all that about?” I said to Luca.
“Just trying to rustle up a bit more business,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
“I thought we might tempt a few more punters over here if we offered a better price on the favorite,” he said, grinning at me. “That’s all.”
I stood there looking at him.
“You silly bugger. We don’t play games with these guys,” I said seriously. “Their bite is far worse than their bark.”
“Don’t be so boring,” he said.
“I mean it. They are powerful people, and they stamp on irritations.”
Was this what he meant by “being at war”?
The starting price was not set by a single bookmaker’s prices. It was a sort of average, but was actually the mode of the offered prices rather than a true average. A mode is that value that occurs most frequently in a sample.
At Ascot the previous week the number of bookmakers was very high, so a representative sample of, say, twelve bookmakers’ prices was used. The twelve were chosen not quite randomly, as they always included those bookies at the highest-traffic end of the betting ring. If, in the sample of twelve, five of the bookmakers had the price of a certain horse as the race started at, say, three-to-one, then its starting price would be three-to-one, even if four of them had the price at seven-to-two and the other three at four-to-one. Three-to-one was the mode because it was the price that occurred most frequently.
If there were two modes because, say in the above example, five bookies had the price at three-to-one, and five of them had it at seven-to-two, then the starting price was always taken as the higher of the two odds. So in that case it would have been seven-to-two.
At Stratford on this particular wet Wednesday in June, there were only four ring bookmakers, so the sample included all of them, but it was still only four. Only two of them needed to offer higher prices than was “true” for the starting price to be recorded as “too high.”
So Luca could not have affected the price on his own.
“Was it Larry’s idea or yours?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?” he said, all innocent.
“It needed two of you,” I said.
“You were there too,” he said with a degree of accusation in his voice.
It was true. I was there, and it was my name on the board, or it was my surname at least. So I would carry the can, if a can indeed had to be carried. But I now realized how much I had subconsciously delegated to Luca and his computer.
“So was it Larry’s idea?” I asked, knowing full well that Luca had brains far in excess of Larry Porter and that it really was bound to have been Luca’s idea. But I wanted him to give me the option of not disposing with his services, to give him the chance to lie to me so that I could try to fool myself that maybe he wouldn’t try it again the next time I wasn’t there.
Was that why he had been so keen for me to stay at home and leave things to him and Betsy? Was that really why Betsy was in such a strop and had decided to absent herself from the scene of the crime?
I could almost hear the cogs whirling in his brain. He knew exactly what I had asked him and why. It wasn’t that I truly wanted to know whose idea and plan it had been. What I was really asking him was whether he wanted to keep his job.
If he started out in business on his own, he would have to purchase a number at a pitch auction in the future, which would require considerable outlay to obtain a decent spot in the ring. And he would most likely end up with a high number and hence a lowly choice of position. Those bookies with the best pitches took the most money, and, in a recession, it was no time to move further down the pack.
From my own point of view, I had come to rely very heavily on Luca. His expertise with our computer and Internet gambling had been instrumental in keeping the name of Teddy Talbot in the higher echelons of bookmaking circles. We had been remarkably profitable over the last few years, and I was not naïve enough to think that it came solely down to me. It was all to do with the teamwork that Luca and I had perfected. Finding a new bookmaker’s assistant wouldn’t be easy, perhaps impossible to find one as good as Luca.
The trouble was, he knew it.
But, that said, I couldn’t keep him on if I didn’t trust him not to bring my business down, either in standing or in monetary terms. If my grandfather had taught me one thing, it was that reputation was important. Most bookmakers are not held in great respect by the majority on the racetrack. Punters tend to think they are being forever robbed blind by the bookies. But I considered that I had always acted fairly and honorably towards the betting public, and also towards my fellow bookmakers, something that had not gone unnoticed by my regular customers. I wasn’t about to see all that change, and Luca had to make his mind up if he could play by my rules. I might be sure that I needed him, but he, in turn, was now deciding if he needed me.
“How about offering me a proper partnership?” he said with a smile.
I took that as a positive sign.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Don’t take too long,” he said seriously, the smile having vanished.
Was he threatening me, I wondered, or simply warning me that he’d had offers from elsewhere?
Being a bookmaker’s assistant was, for some, a self-employed business in itself. In our case, Luca was my full-time employee, but he could do equally well, and maybe better, offering his expert services freelance on a daily basis to the highest bidder. Over the past seven years, since my grandfather had died and I had taken on Luca, I had often engaged a professional bookmaker’s assistant for various days here and there, either when one of us was ill or away on holiday or, in my case, tending to the needs of my sick wife. I tried to use the same man each time, but there were half a dozen or so who were all highly capable and in regular demand.
Maybe Luca was considering joining their ranks, or perhaps he’d had an offer from another bookmaker to become a partner.
I looked over at Larry Porter.
Surely not him, I thought. I had always considered that I was a better businessman than Larry, but maybe he thought the same about me.
“Hi, Larry,” I called across the deserted, rain-swept six feet between us. “What price will you give me on the favorite in the next?”